Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality Now, California

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Oakland Privacy joined 40 other national and CA-based organizations in support of SB 822, the second CA state Net Neutrality bill. SB 822 is a comprehensive net neutrality reform that not only reinstates (in California) the protections in the FCC’s Open Internet Order, but amplifies them by including practices like zero-rating which waives data cap limits for certain sites and gatekeeps consumers w/o unlimited data to content chosen by their mobile and Internet providers.

SB 822 enforces statewide Net Neutrality by forbidding state contracts, cable franchises or broadband expansion funding to non-neutral Internet providers.

Another statewide Net Neutrality bill, SB 460, passed the Ca State Senate in February.

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Police Militarization

Urban Shield As We Know It Ends After 2018

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At today’s Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting, 5+ hours of discussion ended with a decision that Urban Shield as currently constituted would end after the 2018 war games and exposition. The 4-1 vote, with Supervisor Scott Haggerty more or less voting no, left open-ended what Alameda County’s regional disaster preparedness activities would be in future years, but the Supervisors were decisive that it would not be the Urban Shield event, which began in 2007.

A series of embarrasing revelations from the presence of the Oath Keepers extremist group in an allied community fair, the use of racist target dummies, the presence of HSI/ICE, and slush fund donations from the likes of Blackwater seems to have finally pushed the Supervisors over the edge, in a lengthy meeting preceded by a 200 person rally and with dozens of public comments.

East Bay Express coverage.

Black Agenda Report coverage

SF Gate coverage

Uncategorized

On The Corner Of 2nd And 4th

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by Admin

I’d like to tell you that my heart broke when I heard about the Parkland shooting in February. But how many times can the heart break? Considering how frequently mass shootings occur in the US, it’s hard to not feel increasingly desensitized: desensitized to the death tolls, to the vigils, to the platitudes offered by politicians and to the change that never comes.

Though, as an amalgamation of negligence defines this tragedy, a small group of young people in Florida have begun to shout, to walk out, and to organize themselves in an attempt to change the course of this exhausted, uniquely American narrative.

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Facial Recognition

All Surveillance, All the Time

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by J.P. Massar

The future is here. An unholy mix of 1984, Minority Report and cyberpunk. In westernmost China, and increasingly everywhere in a country composing one seventh of humanity, the omnipresent surveillance state is a reality.

Nithin Coca, in an article in Engadget, describes such a hyper-Orwellian system as it exists now in the province of Xinjiang, which is inhabited primarily by the Uyghur people.

It’s a gargantuan melding of personnel and technology:

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Transparency Ordinance

Secrecy in Law Enforcement Technology Subverts Law and Justice

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by Eric Neville

As society is ignorant of its technology, we steer our democracy blindly.  As we willfully conceal information from ourselves, we put blinders on society.  Yet we need to craft our public policy to address the perpetually moving target that is technology.  Without encompassing transparency and accountability legislation for technology used in law enforcement, we will continue to see legislators outpaced, judges kept in the dark, and a public willfully deceived.

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Immigration and ICE, Police Militarization, UASI

ICE At Urban Shield 2017 – (Photo Gallery)

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These photos were produced by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in response to a public records request for photos of the 2017 war games exercise. These are culled from over 300 photos showing officers from the Homeland Security Investigations division of ICE being trained in SWAT techniques by Alameda County during Urban Shield 2017.

Alameda’s training of the ICE division was done without the knowledge of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, which accepts funding for the event from the Department of Homeland Security and whose Sheriff’s Department coordinates the event. The City of San Francisco is the fiscal sponsor for funding intermediary Bay Area UASI.

In January of 2017, Alameda County convened a large task force to review Urban Shield’s impact on Bay Area communities and recommend reforms. That task force, which observed the event extensively, was also not aware of HSI/ICE participation in 2017. 

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